Learning curves (6 page)

6

Jen stared at the book in front of her and frowned. Had her life really come to this? She was sitting in the library, in Bell Consulting of all places, reading a book called
Financial Fundamentals,
which wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d taken on the challenge of a covert operation.

She turned the book upside down and pushed her chair back. Sure, she didn’t want to rush into anything. Of course, she had to plan things properly and keep a low profile so that she didn’t get caught before she found out anything of importance. But there was a fine line between lying low and doing sod all just in case you get caught. And right now she was definitely erring on the side of doing sod all. Anyone would think that she was scared of actually seeing her father or something. Scared of what she might find. Anyone would think that Angel was right about this whole thing. Either that or they’d think that Jen was considering a career as an accountant.

Jen closed the book and sighed. If she didn’t do something soon she’d forget why she was here. She stood up and wandered over to the section of the library entitled Supply Chain, which was reassuringly empty, and walked slowly down the aisle, trying to work out a plan.

It was like Daniel said, she thought to herself. She needed to set out her mission and her objectives. Develop a strategy.

She walked back to her table and picked up her pad and pen, concentrating hard.

Mission: to end the corruption in Indonesia and bring the perpetrators to justice.

For a moment, she basked in the idea of having such a noble mission, but then she shook her head. That wasn’t her mission, she thought, frowning. That was her strategy. The mission was to protect people whose houses had fallen down. Twice. People who trusted companies like Axiom to do what they promised. Her mission was to make sure that this time around, their houses were built properly, by firms that got the business because of their track record, not their ability to pay bribes. But how could she have any impact on something so big? She might as well have “world peace and an end to hunger” as her mission.

Now there was an idea.

She frowned, then decided to skip straight to the next line. Strategy: to uncover Bell’s involvement in the corruption—specifically the involvement of one George Bell—and to alert the authorities.

Jen sat back, imagining herself handing her father over to the police in the manner of a
Scooby Doo
cartoon. He would look at her angrily and say that he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid . . .

Except she wasn’t about to uncover anything. She knew no more now than she’d known several weeks ago. And she wasn’t a meddling kid anymore.

What would Gavin do, she wondered, trying to imagine her ex-boyfriend in her place. Much as she hated to admit it, he was pretty good at this stuff; he always seemed to know what to do, always marshalled everyone into helping. Maybe that was her problem—she was so used to following, to taking orders, that she didn’t know where to start when there was no one to tell her what to do.

She frowned. She didn’t want to be someone who took orders. Especially not from Gavin. She could do this. She just had to get started. Find a way in.

Jen looked at her list and realized how pathetic it looked. How pathetic she looked. Angel was right—this had been a stupid idea. Unless she was going to actually go up to her father’s office and rummage around in his files, what was the point of her being here? Nothing, that’s what. It was just another one of her mother’s crazy ideas, and she’d been stupid enough to go along with it.

She put her pad back down and made her way out of the library. Maybe she should just quit, she thought despondently. Maybe she should do something else with her life, something that was actually going to achieve something. This had been a bad idea from the start, and to stay here was just adding insult to injury.

But what would she do instead? Go back to Green Futures?

She walked down the corridor slowly. It wouldn’t be so bad, she told herself. At least she wouldn’t have to finish her internal analysis assignment.

She headed for the lift and stood in front of it waiting, reviewing her reflection in its warped mirrored doors.

I’m just going to walk out,
she told herself.
Go for a walk and clear my head. And if I decide to quit, then that’s what I’ll do. Mum will just have to live with it.

She heard brisk footsteps coming down the corridor and looked up to see Jack, the consultant from the dinner and the lift, with a colleague she didn’t recognize. She rolled her eyes. That’s all she needed—another stuck-up consultant talking about student protesters.

But they didn’t seem to notice her as they waited with her in front of the lift.

“He wants tickets to Indonesia?” one said conspiratorially.

“Yeah,” the other one said. He was the one she’d argued with in the lift. “Fuck knows why. Wants them delivered personally.”

Jen frowned, then looked away. She’d made up her mind to go, she told herself. She really wasn’t interested.

“You on your way up now?”

“What does it look like?”

“D’you think this is to do with Axiom?”

The guy Jen had argued with looked at his colleague with contempt. “I’d never have thought of that,” he said sarcastically, just as the lift arrived.

The doors pinged open.

“It’s going down,” said the argumentative one, who shot a look at Jen. “You want this one?”

Jen frowned.

“Actually, no,” she said eventually, a nervous smile playing on her lips, “I think I’m going to go up.”

The two consultants walked briskly out of the lift and didn’t seem in the least interested in Jen, who walked out tentatively and tried to get her bearings. So this was the eighth floor. This was where her father worked, where board meetings were held. She’d been here before, many years ago, but right now it felt like a different lifetime. It looked different now, smaller, and she couldn’t remember her way around.

She edged along the corridor, trying to look nonchalant, like she had every reason in the world to be there. If challenged, she would say she was lost, she decided. Was looking for the library. Or her tutor. Or . . .

“Hello, dear. Can I help you?”

A woman in her fifties was smiling at Jen. She smiled back. “I, um, was looking for the loo, actually,” she said immediately.

“Just over there, dear. In the corner.”

Jen looked over at the large LADIES sign and smiled awkwardly. She wandered over, but just before she walked in she took a sneaky look back and saw the two consultants walking into a large glass-fronted office on the opposite side of the floor. A room she recognized. She saw a man stand up to greet them. And the man, she realized with a start, was her father.

“We’ve got the tickets, Mr. Bell. So, who are they for?”

George stared at Jack in a way that told him this was a question that he shouldn’t be asking. Jack looked away awkwardly.

“Peter was saying that Green Futures were out in force at the Tsunami dinner the other night,” his colleague chipped in quickly. “Apparently your, um . . . Harriet . . . Ms. Keller . . . she was talking a lot about Axiom to people. Hinting that Bell might be implicated in the . . . uh . . . corruption allegations. Just . . . thought you’d want to know.”

George stared at him, then back at Jack, and they both shrank back.

“Thank you, both of you,” he said gruffly. “And just for the record, the day Bell Consulting starts to worry about gossip is the day that hell freezes over. Do I make myself clear?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Bell.”

The two consultants left, and George made his way back to his desk slowly. Was Harriet up to something? Should he be worried? He shrugged. She was always up to something. There was no point becoming alarmed. Harriet loved nothing more than gossip, a story. She knew nothing, and he was confident that it would stay that way.

He could never quite fathom how someone as intelligent as Harriet could be so utterly silly at the same time. He still remembered the day she’d walked into his office, a mere secretary, and had told him that the paper she was typing for him was all wrong and that she had a much better idea. He’d fallen for her right then and there, bowled over by her confidence, her insouciance, and, of course, her idea which, it turned out, was brilliant. But the very next day he’d heard her telling someone just as urgently about trees being more spiritual than human beings. She was scattered, George thought to himself. She’d never think about one thing long enough to work it out. She was hardly a threat.

It was amazing, George reflected, that she’d managed to run her own firm for so long. Amazing that her coworkers were able to work around her changing moods, her butterflylike attention span.

Well, at least he was out of it. At least he wasn’t married anymore. What a marriage that had been, he thought ruefully. How exhausting.

And yet . . . he’d enjoyed some of it. The bits with Jen, mostly. Jennifer Bell, his daughter. He’d been so proud of her, had such high hopes.

He turned and stared out of the window. Life was full of compromises, he thought sadly. Full of tradeoffs and you-scratch-my-back deals. Did anyone really get what they wanted? Had he? He’d hardly seen Jen even when they were a family. He’d always been so busy, building his empire, building a future. And then she was gone, and he realized he barely even knew her.

Still, he told himself, turning back round to his desk. No point crying over spilled milk or wondering about what might have been. Much better to just get on with the job in hand.

George sighed. He sometimes wondered if he’d have been a better father if he’d had a son. Someone he could talk business with, play sports with. Women were so . . . complicated. Even now, even at his age, he found women hard to fathom. They wanted to talk all the time, started arguments from the least little thing. To George the world was a simple place of black and white. But all the women he’d known seemed hell-bent on turning it into a mass of uncertain, moving gray. He got up, walked to the door, and leaned out.

“Emily, why are women so complicated?” he asked his personal assistant.

She ignored him, as always. “Mr. Bell, sir, I’ve got Mr. Gates on the phone. He’s wondering if you could pop over sometime this week.”

“Okay. Put him through, will you? And, Emily, a coffee would be great. Get me a macchiato?”

“You mean a decaf macchiato,” Emily said matter-of-factly, and ignored his grimace.

George marched back to his desk, picked up the phone, and put all thoughts of Jennifer out of his head.

From across the floor, Jen watched him beadily, then slowly made her way back down to the seventh floor.

Harriet Keller looked around her carefully. She needed somehow to capture the energy of the old days. Get Green Futures back on the map. And hopefully, this presentation would do the trick, would get everyone excited again.

“So you see,” she said energetically to the fifty or so Green Futures employees congregated in the meeting room, “we have to use passion. Understanding. All around us, corporations are realizing that they can’t ignore the community anymore, can’t ignore global warming and poverty. We will continue to stand up for integrity, for love. And in doing so, we will change the world.”

As she went to sit down, she nervously listened to the applause. Harriet needed applause, needed praise and validation, and she knew it. It wasn’t something she was particularly proud of. She was well aware that it was a weakness, that she shouldn’t care what people thought, but the fact was that she cared hugely. Nothing motivated her more than the adulation of others; nothing spurred her on more than the opportunity to prove herself—or, more often, to prove someone else wrong. She’d only started this firm to prove to her bloody ex-husband that she could, and what a triumph that had been. But now that particular motivation wasn’t as compelling. And these days she didn’t seem to be as interesting to the press, either. She sighed, then smiled as she saw Paul walking toward her.

“What did you think?” she asked immediately, trying to sound chirpy and confident.

He looked at her seriously. “Very, very good,” he said. “I found it very . . . inspiring.”

Harriet’s eyes lit up and she smiled gratefully. “Oh, you’re too kind, Paul, really. So you think it was okay?”

“It was much more than okay,” he said immediately. “You should not doubt yourself so much.”

“Oh, I know,” Harriet said with a sigh. “But it is so very tough at the top. Really, it is. Everyone wants so much, and trying to balance my time—it leaves me exhausted. Particularly when Tim keeps telling me we should be spending less all the time. I can’t run a business without spending money, Paul. I just can’t.”

“Everything will be fine,” Paul said serenely. “You worry too much, Harriet. Have more confidence in your ability.”

Harriet took Paul’s hand. “Oh, Paul, I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re the only one who really understands me, you know. The only person who understands what I’m trying to achieve, who can see the dimensions in which I work.”

Paul smiled, looking a little embarrassed. “I do my best,” he said simply.

“Next week,” Harriet said suddenly, “we should have a party. Something to get people excited again. What do you think?”

Paul nodded seriously. “I think it is a great idea. I will, unfortunately, be away, however. I have to see a client in Scotland.”

Harriet looked crestfallen. “You have to go? But what will I do without you?”

“I will only be gone a few days. I think you will be okay. I know you will.”

Harriet nodded stoically. “Yes, I will,” she said with a little smile. “With your support, Paul, I know that I will.”

She made her way back to her office, humming softly and planning in her head a party for Paul’s return. She would invite all the journalists who’d interviewed her over the years. She’d make another little speech. Maybe allude to Bell and the corruption allegations. Show the world how important she and her firm were in upholding truth and justice and . . . Harriet’s humming stopped abruptly when she saw that Tim the number cruncher was waiting for her.